For the whole of my last term at primary school, my best friend Joyce and I had only one topic of conversation – how were babies made?
We had theories on everything, from what the mysterious ‘towel’ machines on the walls in public loos were to how babies arrived.
I knew they came from the mother’s tummy – and as my gran had a very generous cleavage, I assumed that the baby came out from between your breasts. I prefer the theory told to Julie Vinsome though…
Bellies are unzipped
“At primary school in the Fifties one of the older girls told us how babies were born. ‘Ladies who have husbands have a zip that starts at their belly button and when they want a baby, they just unzip their tummy and the baby jumps out’. I timidly asked if she had a zip. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I have to get a husband first'”
From the Tummy button
“I was told by a schoolfriend that babies came out of your mummy’s tummy button and Mummy and Daddy then gave the baby to the stork to deliver.”
At the bottom of a rainbow
“I was born in 1958 and my late mum told me ‘when your dad and I were ready to have a new baby we went to the bottom of a rainbow where we were met by a fairy who took us over the rainbow and let us pick a rose we liked, and you were behind the rose’. She said she chose a red rose. I never questioned this and to this day love to think that my mum and dad chose me specially!”
Brought by the doctor
“Early one morning, when I was six, I was woken up early, as my new baby brother or sister was arriving. I was sure that it would be a sister as I really wanted one.
“I can remember a lot of activity and being kept occupied by my daddy and grandparents. Eventually the family doctor came in, held his black bag up and said ‘You’ve got a new baby brother’.
“I was convinced the baby was in his bag and he’d been so long arriving as he had to look under all the gooseberry bushes. I cried and cried and begged him to take him back as I really wanted a sister.”
Sitting next to a man on the bus
“My mother just said, ‘don’t sit next to any man on the bus’! I thought for a long time I might get pregnant that way.”
The shock when you hear the truth
“But we soon wished we hadn’t as this horror story came tumbling from her lips. Our eyes popped out as she told us about these rude things that grown ups did. I knew that my mummy and daddy would never do anything that rude!”
“Then I wondered why Pat would make up such a dreadful story. Perhaps she hadn’t. My childhood ended with that information, but I was determined that I would never, ever, do that.”
When hearing the truth works well
“The birds and the bees was a no-go area at school, not even discussed. But the night before our wedding, my mother-in-law handed my husband a book with sealed pages and brown paper covering.”
“This was to take on honeymoon. We went to a little caravan in Devon and with great excitement opened the pages and were shocked to see a naked couple and the title, The Technique of Sex. We did read the book and a few years later we had three children under three!”
Call the Midwife
“She told me, ‘I asked the midwife how does the baby get out of your tummy? The midwife just said, ‘You know how it went in? Well that’s where it comes out!’ And she soon found out that this was right.”
Even the royal family get roped in
“A few days after my 11th birthday our headmistress assembled the whole school in the hall. She told us Princess Elizabeth would have her baby very soon.
“‘If we have a Princess you must come to school in the morning and go home at lunchtime. If we have a Prince you’ll have the whole day off.’
“I went home and told my mother. ‘But how do they know she’ll be having a baby?’ I asked. ‘Oh’ she said, ‘they’ve spotted a stork flying around Buckingham Palace.’ How things have changed.”
They certainly have. These days we’d give the same time off for a Prince or a Princess – and quite right too!
This story was originally published on Yours UK.
